Night Fangs

Well, Night Fangs was absolutely awful. What is it about bad horror movies that allows them to sink to depths of absolute shit quality largely unreached by other genres of bad movies?

Night Fangs is about lesbian couple, Lupe and Jennifer. We first see them lure a man in for a threesome and then kill him and bathe in his blood. Lupe and Jennifer are obsessed with Elizabeth Bathory. They emulate her crimes to achieve eternal youth and possibly vampirism. Luckily for them, they track down Elizabeth Bathory’s diary. After getting a professor to translate it, they learn for the blood bath to have any supernatural effects, the victim must be a virgin. As such, they set their sights on a young Christian girl named Amy. Jennifer begins to have second thoughts but it’s too late. Lupe has killed her and lo and behold, the ritual worked and the women become vampires. However, Amy also comes back as a vampire! It is now down to Amy’s boyfriend, the professor and a group of locals to defeat these vampires.

Night Fangs is bad in a very uninteresting way. This isn’t a fun or funny bad nor is it bad in any surprising ways. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a super low budget horror movie. The acting is bad, the characters unlikable, there’s not any actual scares and the movie tries to distract you from all these faults with nudity and male gaze lesbianism. Nothing I haven’t seen before time and time again.

The only funny scene in the movie is where the locals go to the professor’s house to get him to help them deal with the vampires. The professor responds saying they haven’t told him anything you couldn’t find in an Anne Rice or Stephen King novel. Essentially, he calls out the complete lack of originality in these vampires and the general plot. This is particularly weird given that the professor is played by the writer/director of the film. Even he doesn’t seem to think this movie has anything unique or creative going for it. And he’s right.

A big part of why Night Fangs fails is a simple lack of budget. And while that’s an explanation to a degree, it’s not an excuse. There are cheap ways that you can set a mood and build tension. The movie does none of these things. But really, it’s not like if the movie had a budget it would be good. There’s still nothing original or interesting in the plot. This isn’t a case of a talented director or decent screenplay failing to live up to its potential because of a lack of budget. This is a case where there’s a reason no one would give this movie a budget and that’s because it’s a shit movie.

I do respect the fact that the movie shows more budget use over time instead of less. There’s still little money to be found and the movie still sucks in ways that go beyond money, but this was the right choice. Of the $15 this movie had for a budget, at least $10 goes into the third act. There’s more effects and blood in the last act which is the correct choice. I’ve seen horror movies that blow their budget in the first half. This isn’t one of them. For all of Night Fangs’ failures, at least it knows to save your budget so you can have some money for the last act.

While the movie does have lesbian characters, this is not exactly a win for representation. Jennifer and Lupe are very much male fantasy lesbians. They’re flat characters with a lot of nude scenes and a random hatred for men because that’s how all lesbians are, right? The word “dyke” is also used a whole lot in the film by characters who end up being the heroes of the piece. Night Fangs is also occasional racist and briefly transphobic despite there being no trans characters in the movie. The only equality to be found here is that every character regardless of colour, gender or sexuality is poorly written and probably says an offensive slur at some point.

The only people I would recommend Night Fangs to are disheartened aspiring filmmakers. Maybe seeing this piece of shit will inspire you to start or finish your movie. After all, if such a piece of shit as Night Fangs not only got made but received distribution, what’s stopping you? For everyone else though, don’t see this movie. It’s just another cheap, bad horror movie providing neither scares nor even laughs. Give it a miss.

Overall rating: 1.4/10

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